April 2013

April 26, 2013

Terrance Williams said he is going to get a chance to learn from
one of the best – Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant.

“Back in college, when I was on scout team, I had to be him,”
said Williams, the Baylor receiver taken by the Cowboys in the third round of
the NFL draft Friday night.

“That’s somebody that I really, really liked,” Williams said. “I’m
going to get a chance to play beside him. That means the world to me because now
I get to learn from one of the best and somebody that can help me throughout
the whole process, bring out the best side of me.”

Williams said he’ll go into the NFL with confidence after seeing the
success of former Baylor receivers Josh Gordon and Kendall Wright.

“That lets me know, hey, we can fit right in, too,” Williams
said. “When they call my number, that’s my chance to make a play. I’m just going
to continue to make plays and play. That’s something I plan to do when I come
in from Day 1.”

Williams said he had not yet heard from his former quarterback, Robert
Griffin III. But he knows what that first NFL meeting is going to be like.

“I’m pretty sure when we play the Redskins, it’s going to get
pretty heated,” he said, drawing laughs from the reporters. “I’m not going to
like his team. Probably going to get crazy there.”

The Cowboys filled one of the positions they prioritized for this
draft, taking Georgia
Southern safety J.J. Wilcox with their second pick in the third round Friday
night.

Wilcox, 6-0 and 215, will join a safety group that looked like
one of the most vulnerable on the roster, manned only by a fourth-year undrafted
free agent, Barry Church; a second-year player who didn’t play as a rookie,
Matt Johnson; and a veteran free agent signee, Will Allen.

Wilcox was actually a receiver his first three seasons at Georgia
Southern. He both carried the ball and caught it, but moved last year to the
defensive secondary and had two interceptions.

The Cowboys continued a Romo-friendly draft Friday night with their
first pick in the third round, adding speedster Baylor receiver Terrance
Williams.

The Cowboys invested in the Baylor standout with the No. 74 pick
that they got in the first-round trade with the San Francisco 49ers. It was their third
offensive player taken in three picks, joining center Travis Frederick and
tight end Gavin Escobar.

Williams caught 202 passes for 3,334 yards, averaging 16.5 yards,
and 27 touchdowns in a four-year career at Baylor.

As a senior, he caught 97 passes for 1,832 yards, averaging 18.9
yards, with 12 touchdowns.

He was also a kickoff and punt returner as a sophomore and junior
at Baylor.

The Cowboys’ newest tight end will be glad to take over for their
most veteran tight end one day, if necessary.

Gavin Escobar, taken by the Cowboys in the second round on Friday
night, said he will strive to be a complete tight end like 11-year veteran
Jason Witten.

“If I can take over once he is gone, that would be amazing,” Escobar
said in a conference call with reporters.

Escobar said the Cowboys told him they plan to use him in
different ways and change the way they use their tight ends. Escobar is another
pass-catching tight end on a roster that already has Witten, who last year set an NFL record for
catches in a season by a tight end, and second-year James Hanna, who came on at
the end of last year.

Escobar, at 6-6 and 254, said he wants to get bigger and improve
his role in the running game.

“That’s what I need to excel and be a three-down tight end,” he
said.

Escobar was born in New York City
and moved to California
as a child. He said he grew up a Giants fan.

“It might be tough for my brother to change,” he said. “But I’m
sure he will be rooting for the Cowboys.”

The Cowboys added a pass-catching tight end with their second
pick in the NFL draft.

Gavin Escobar, a 6-foot-6, 254-pound tight end from San Diego State, went to the Cowboys with the 47th
pick.

He joins a tight end picture in Dallas that already includes
veteran Jason Witten, who last year set the NFL record for catches in a season
by a tight end, and second-year tight end James Hanna, who came on as a pass
catcher at the end of last year.

Escobar has his own pass-catching credentials. He finished his
career with the Aztecs with 122 catches for 1,646 yards and 17 touchdowns.

His 51 catches and 780 yards as a sophomore ranked as the
second-best season by a tight end at San
Diego State.

The 22-year-old was born in New York City
and moved to California as a child, playing at
Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Orange County.

The Cowboys liked a lot of things about Wisconsin center Travis Frederick, their No.
1 pick on Thursday night.

But that chemical engineering degree? Now you’re talking.

There’s no better way to impress Cowboys executive vice president
Stephen Jones, who majored in the same, said his father, Cowboys owner Jerry
Jones.

“With Stephen in charge of our personnel, someone that can
graduate in his junior year in engineering – a chemical engineer – you’ve got a
handicap from the word ‘go,’ ” Jerry Jones joked in a press conference after
the first round of the NFL draft. “He’s a little partial. He moves up the
board, these engineers.”

It was a little family humor from the top two men in the Cowboys
organization, but head coach Jason Garrett reinforced the idea that Frederick’s intelligence was
a big factor.

“He has the makeup as a person, and his football integrity and
character is outstanding, and he’s just a good, smart football player,” Garrett
said. “There is just a lot to like about him. ... Very smart academically in
college and just a really solid person to go along with what we think are
really good traits as a player, to address a really good need on our football
team.”

The Cowboys opted not to try to wait for defensive tackle Sharrif
Floyd in the first round Thursday night because he didn’t fit their new
defensive scheme.

“In our system, we probably would put a premium on a quick-twitch
potential 3-technique,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Thursday night after the
first round. “We view him as not that, but certainly maybe capable of getting
there. So that is a case where our system, our switch from the 3-4 where he was
obviously a nose tackle – had a lot of promise."

Floyd, mocked as high as No. 3 to the Raiders, went No. 23 to Minnesota after the
Cowboys traded out of the 18th pick to the 31st. It could be that his lack of
sacks at Florida
– only 4 1/2 in his career – hurt Floyd’s stock more than expected.

“He’s an outstanding football player,” Jones said. “But we were
sitting there with some real good grades in a couple situations. Again, I think
you’ve got to put our decision-making with a real focus on doing something in
the interior offensive line.”

The Cowboys said Thursday night there are a lot of draft trade
charts, which assign a point value to every pick in the draft, from the first
in the first to the last in the last.

By most accounts, the Cowboys “lost” their trade, 900 points to
820, with the San Francisco
49ers because they gained only a third-round pick in their exchange of
first-rounders. Eighty points is a significant difference; getting within 10 to
50 points is generally acceptable. To even up the score, the Cowboys should
have gotten back a second-round pick.

But executive vice president Stephen Jones said there’s more than
one way to read a chart.

“There are a whole lot of them,” he said. “We have one that we
work off of, and we do update it. I would say that on the ones that we have,
for the most part, we either won or hit right on it.”

The Cowboys, of course, should know what they’re talking about
when it comes to the trade chart. They invented it under former head coach Jimmy
Johnson.

But general manager Jerry Jones said the chart is not everything
when it comes to making trades.

“It’s a mistake to think that transactions go by any trade chart,”
he said. “We invented trade charts; invented them in the NFL. You had a trade
earlier today that was off the charts in trade charts. It boils down to the
right time at the right place, and does it fit you?”

Cowboys executive vice president Jerry Jones said the team had a
trade ready to go with the 49ers before the draft, as is standard operating
procedure, in case the board dried up before the 18th pick.

Which is what happened.

The Cowboys swapped first-round picks with the 49ers, getting the
31st and using it to take Wisconsin
center Travis Frederick and gaining a third-round pick in the exchange.

But who called who?

“We had visits, as we have done in the past, well before the
draft,” Jones said Thursday night. “We had a handful of guys that we felt like
would be real valuable at 18, and knowing that there was a pretty decent chance
you wake up and they not be there when 18 came around. We had done some
homework, just as we had with St.
Louis last year and other teams in the past.”

So, you called them?

“I can’t recall, to tell you the truth, in terms of how it
worked,” Jones said.

The Cowboys might not want to remember. They "lost" the trade by 80 points in terms of the generally accepted draft chart, which assigns point values to every pick in the draft. But Jones said there are "a whole lot" of charts, and that the Cowboys update theirs.

"I would say that one the ones that we have, for the most part, we either won or hit right on it," he said.